Project Broken: Drawing Down

Good evening fellow people. Above you will see two large charcoal drawings of trees. Some of the first drawings of the semester. The problem with the one on the left, Ben, is that he looks too 2D. I fixed that with the Orchard on the right, showing branches coming out of the front as well as sides. It was fun, but as drawing is, it was time consuming. Drawing takes way too much of my time, and I believe that is why it is my least favorite subject.

I skimped out on a bunch of landscapes, but this was one of the couple that was not complete crap. I did it over the course of two days, the first one was a perfectly normal afternoon, and the next day I was filled with angst and anger. It was not a comfortable feeling, and the tree in the middle got the grunt of the aggression. Luckily for it, I love it. I think it is one of my best pieces.

Here we have two evergreens, meant to become a series of three with my first Ben drawing. I did the blue one on top first, then this purple one. I then continued on to a bit more expression for my Theosophy project, and did the tree below. This tree is very important to me (in case you couldn't tell by me naming him Ben), and I wanted to capture it in time.

Up next was a study on horticulture. This drawing really only got 2/3rds finished, but once I did the berry branch, I wanted to move on. Our project after the Horticulture one was a series based off of previous drawings, so I chose the one I just finished. I really enjoyed drawing the berries, and I thought I could expand on that idea.

So I did the Berry Branch. I liked it but wasn't quite as pleased as I was with the other one. And I realized that that is because of the paper quality. This one is mediocre; the Horticulture one was like four dollars. So, paper is an investment.

Then there was this pink flower I randomly found and liked. Wanted to use more colour, I broke out the chalk pastels. When I was done, they looked great, but they were floating in the middle of the page. I needed to set it somewhere. So I went all contemporary and gave it this root system. I call the piece Digital Root System.

After a half a semester of pumping out landscapes, one right after the other, it was nice to finally move into some figure drawing. We got a model named Pam in, whom we worked with for a few weeks. The two drawings above were between 15 and 30 minutes long.

Then we had Emily in, who is one of my favorite models. It's nice drawing someone with a nice figure, because then you're bound to have a nice drawing in the end. Again, these two drawings were roughly 20 minutes long.

Near the end there, as per  usual, I was getting bored of our subjects. Models again. Pam again. So what do you do when you're not enjoying the medium you're working in? Start using a new medium! Chalk pastel. It was a lot of fun, and in one sitting I made a bunch of discoveries about it. I call the drawing on the top left Resting, and the one on the right is just Blue Pam.

We had a few self portraits under our belt by this point. Unfortunately all of mine were in my sketchbook, which I didn't bother taking any pictures of. But this one is one of my most recent, and one of the ones I am extremely proud of. I hope to expand on this type of drawing this semester.

One project we had to do was called a Total Information Drawing. As you can tell from the title, you're supposed to choose something and make a total info drawing based on it. I chose some of my paintbrushes because I had a really neat idea. I used ink and acrylic paint, and I am also extremely pleased with these two drawings. I was going to do three, but as is the story of my life, I got lazy. My drawing teacher didn't really like them, buuuuuut I did. And I have to decide that that's all I care about.

And last but certainly not least, my final self portraits. The project was multiple views, and I am very pleased with this one. I think that they're slightly questionable in terms of actually looking like me, but I did the entire piece in chalk pastel, putting more focus on the coours than accuracy. All the same, I think I did well.Similarly to my paintings, this drawing has layers. And it would be neat to be viewed from up close, because of how many layers I have put in this. The subtleties just made me happy.

Okee dokee everyone! Thanks for watching, hope you had fun, and I'll see you next time!

Today is the first day of classes for this semester, and I am entering in to it without a phone. Because I have lost mine, onnnnceeee again. -.-

Not the end of the world, but it makes doing the whole social media thing completely ridiculous. I'm sure I'll survive and probably won't even notice after a short while, but it's still difficult.

So until next time!

Arting It Up

Hello! Yes I am still here, and yes I am still making art! I tell you, this school year is absolutely insane. I cannot remember a time where I have been so outrageously busy as I have been the past four weeks. But I digress - My sister just highlighted me in her blog today (click here!), and I figured this is the perfect time to update all my social media! May as well, so people know I'm still active. I guess.. I'm very bad at this social media thing. But at any rate, here we are! On my right, we have Barbie Antoinette for my Art History project. I am recreating a dress from Marie Antoinette's time made from tissue paper. She's a work in progress, but I'm having fun.

Below we have my finished Season Series from Ceramics. All glazed and fired and looking pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself.

 We have Spring on the left and Autumn on the right.

 And Winter on the left and Summer on the right.

 I had a particularly good day in drawing today, knocking off two impressive (for me) 15-minute drawings of one of our models, and two equally as impressive 1-hr long drawings of one of our other models, both done in chalk pastel (below).

 A couple self portraits. The one on the left was done a couple weeks ago, the left page being a line drawing and the right being tonal. The image on the right is an unfinished composition of three self portraits, but the top left face is complete and I am very happy with it.

Last but never least we have painting. The one on the left was for our Halloween project called "Dance with Death", and I decided to do death of religion and get all symbolic. Which I did and it was great, but I would have liked to maybe do another one that was actually scary and more Halloweeny. Oh well. On the right I have a splatter painting that I did today that I think is rather neat and I would like to make more of them. And so I am. Because they're fun. I'm also experimenting with colour and colour mixing. There are colours that can mix with other colours, and there are colours that should never touch each other. I am experimenting with those pallettes and I am excited to see what sorts of colours I can come up with.

In the meantime I am staying busy with the Visual Art Society. We just had our first art sale and we are planning for our Christmas sale taking place in a couple of weeks here. Ain't no rest for the wicked, that's for sure!

Until next time, peace and love my pretties :)

Art Update

I have been ridiculously busy these past couple of weeks, and here's some pictures to help show why.

First we have mine and Hannah's space we took over whilst studying for our Art History midterm. The exam was seperated into two parts - one was an in class slide recognition, and the other was a take home, open book. Final mark: 98%. :)

Next we have painting. First assignment was an Expressive Landscape assignment, in which I completed this 3 feet x 3 feet acrylic painting. Our second assignment was another three week one, called Three Style Boogie. The idea was we drew randomly from a selection of artistic styles (for example Cubism, Expressionism, Impressionism, etc), and put together a painting using three of them. I drew Orientalism, Comic, and Psychadelic. This is the result. 1.5 feet x 3 feet acrylic.

Something I've realized, now that I'm starting on my third painting, is that there is clearly a colour pallette of choice here. My four colours of choice are Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Red, and Indian Yellow Hue. If I only ever had those four colours to paint with for the rest of my life, I'd be okay with that.

Moving on, we have drawing. I've done quite a few drawings in the past couple of weeks, as our drawing teacher is insane and assigns a huge amount of homework per week. At any rate, I'll only post pictures of my favourites.

In drawing I was focused on the landscapes, as was the assignment for the last month and a half, but I was also thinking about expression. I was going for expression in line in the two plant drawings, I was going for expression in atmosphere in my two fir tree series, and I was going for a sense of emotion in my colourful one.

And now we  have the class that has been taking absolutely all of my time: Ceramics. Our assignment for the past few weeks is a Pouring and Drinking assignment, focusing on things thrown off the wheel. The idea was to make a series or a set, something that obviously goes with each other. How I chose to deal with this project was just throw throw throw until I had a good amount of stuff, and then try to match them with each other. Because nothing was ever consistent with me, so I ended up with a few different shapes.

At this point in time I have finished glazing all my pieces that are ready to be glazed. Our teacher has this thing against hoarding our work, which makes sense, and I look at all my stuff and scold myself. But then I realize that it's not that I've been hoarding my work; I just made it all at the same time. And I kept...

Making...

More.

Bit of advice: If you're an arts student and you're going into ceramics and you're an over-achiever, you're never going to get any other work done. Ever.

So anyways, I finally have enough stuff bisqued, and before I was ready to glaze I had to sort them out and figure out the set I wanted to put them in. I found a theme. Naturally, it has to do with nature and landscapes, as does everything else in my life apparently.

So first we have spring. I have glazed them with pale, natural colours. I chose these three for spring because the pouring vessel looks like it's melting, the large bowl has black and white drips, as if icicles are melting, and the cup is just nice.

The next set is summer, also three pieces. I chose these three for summer because the pouring vessel looks like a watering can, the bowl looks like a fountain, and the cup has blue and white slip on it, so it's gonna be bright and colourful. I've glazed them with blurs, reds, whites, and yellows if I do remember correctly.

Autumn is next. Oh I should say, the cool thing about what I'm doing now with the pulling of items together after I've made a bunch, is that there was stuff I already had on the go before I was given this assignment, and some of them have just worked out in the themes. So this one's autumn. I'm probably only going to have three pieces, just like the other two seasons, but I've used two pouring vessels in case one doesn't turn out very nicely.

Naturally, I've glazed them ambers, browns, and beiges. Maybe a green or two, too.

And then we have winter. Winter to me is cold and gloomy and dead and gross and I don't like it. So most of my winter pieces I've glazed white, black, beige, and other kinda pale, sickly colours. However I also have some bright red and greens, since Winter to me also means Christmas, and is in fact the only thing that redeems winter in my eyes.

Again, I'm probably only going to have three pieces in the set, but I have extras in case they turn out hideous. I chose these two pouring containers because of the way I've built them, they reminded me of snowmen.

So there you have it! You are now caught up in all my projects. Coming up: Glazed works as well as lots of self portraits and a Halloween painting! Stay tuned!

Art Bits and Pieces

One of my many classes at RDC is 3D Fundamentals, which is similar to last semester's 2D Fundamentals, but, obviously, about 3-Dimensional things. So we built nano houses and sculptures out of matte board, and one of the later assignments was to create little chair models, out of whatever we so desired.

My first chair was out of a single piece of wire. It was kinda flimsy wire, but it got the job done.

My second piece was made entirely out of candy. It also took me the longest, and I learned a valuable lesson: chocolate doesn't glue together. I tried all sorts of glue- white, carpenters, hot, crazy, none of it worked. What I found worked best was trying to stick them together, then get a blowdryer and melt them together. With the exception of the pretzels being glued together, the entire thing is edible. Although I wouldn't recommend eating it anymore. Who knows how many people have sampled it between making it and now.

The third one didn't work out quite right, for which I am quite disappointed. I made a chair out of clay with the intention of casting it in clear resin and then steampunking it to make it a steampunk underwater chair. Turns out that the resin was old and wouldn't set, and I ended up running out of time. But it initially was going to look like this. Only in clear resin.

The following are some things I was working on in Ceramics. I have since finished them and completed all projects, but I have yet to take pictures of them. So as of right now, we have...

My steamboat teapot...

 One of the projects in Ceramics was a tile project. So basically, I had some black paint, splattered it on a piece of paper, folded the paper in half to make a mirror image, cropped it to a rectangular shape, and then photocopied a bunch of copies to see what it would look like as a repeating tile. I liked how the two looked, so I carved them into clay, a process that I don't care to explain, let's just say it was time consuming. What I've done after that is made a couple boxes using each of the tile patterns. They were pretty awesome.... I will post pictures later!

 One of the last projects we had for drawing was to do a couple self portraits, Chuck Close style. This is one of my (unfinished, at the time) drawings of myself, on a grid. Again, finished pictures will be posted later, as I am quite proud of it.

In the meantime, all my pictures are organized, and I am content.

If you or anyone you know is interested, I do take commissions. Of all sorts... Just let me know! :)

Cheers.